Aguirre: San Diego is bankrupt

Former San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre is urging city leaders to freeze retirement benefits for workers and enter bankruptcy as a way to erase a $2.1 billion pension deficit.

Aguirre invited local media to a news conference Tuesday in which he outlined the city’s dire financial straits and said the decision by Mayor Jerry Sanders and others to pump more money into the pension system several years ago backfired when the recession hit.

“The city of San Diego is bankrupt; there’s no getting out of it,” he said. “There’s not enough money in the city to pay these benefits.”

Aguirre, now in private practice, is one of the leading opponents of a proposed half-cent sales tax measure on the Nov. 2 ballot. The measure has 10 changes to employee pensions and city operations attached to it that must be completed before any money can be collected.

If it is approved by voters, Aguirre said it would do little to nothing to address the vast majority of the pension debt because many of the proposed changes will only have a minor fiscal impact.

Mayoral spokesman Darren Pudgil said that Aguirre is neglecting to point out that Sanders is the only mayor in recent memory to make full payments to the pension system instead of ignoring the problem.

"This is the same lame kind of rhetoric that Mike has been spewing for years," he said. "As is routinely the case with Mike, he doesn't know what he's talking about. If he did, he might still be the city attorney."

Employee pensions were the focal point of Aguirre’s four-year tenure as city attorney when he sued to eliminate about $900 million in benefits that he says were approved illegally in 2002. He consistently lost in court, but the lawsuit remains alive. He lamented that there probably isn’t the political will to continue the case.

Asked why he was campaigning against the sales tax, Aguirre said he didn’t want the public to get fooled by elected officials again.

“We need to have a greater veracity and credibility and fidelity to our political dialogue so that we don’t do short-term gain, long-term pain but we do short-term pain and long-term gain,” he said. “I just want people to get fully educated so that they don’t get taken again.”

Aguirre said he plans to debate City Councilwoman Donna Frye, who crafted the sales tax measure, on Sept. 23 about its merits. He has also challenged Sanders, the ballot measure’s top proponent, to a televised debate.